Re: [lojban] Re: Alice - the xorlo version

[Craig Daniel <teucer@pobox.com>]

2010/9/24 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 12:29 AM, Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I don't mean to sound rude, but we are two native English speakers
>> (myself and Robin), and you are not. The meaning of the phrase, in my
>> native understanding of English, is that she grew bored with it.
>
> I don't think anyone is misunderstanding what the English says
> (Spanish "cansado" works basically the same as English "tired" in this
> respect, so rest assured that that is not the issue.) We are not

As a native English speaker who speaks enough Spanish to have worked
as an interpreter: while semantics is the one field where I will not
claim to ever have achieved native-speaker quality intuition, it is my
understanding that "cansado" is an incredibly exact synonym for
"tired." While translating from one language to another when neither
is your native tongue is a dicey thing to get exactly right, I don't
think it's likely at all that xorxes is misunderstanding the meaning
of "tired."

> arguing about what the English "tired of" means, that's clear enough.
> We are discussing whether or not the Lojban word "tatpi" has a meaning
> wide enough to go beyond pysical exhaustion or fatigue.

I'd say "tatpi" unambiguously *can* go beyond physical exhaustion at
least as far as mental exhaustion, and that is not under question as
far as I can tell. Alice is not experiencing what I would normally
call mental exhaustion, though, and the question is whether "tatpi" is
broad enough to cover the experience she is having.

I guess my answer (not that it's as relevant as those who use the
language regularly; I was never fluent, and unfortunately my
vocabulary isn't what it once was these days) would be that an
unmodified "tatpi" will generally be taken in a sense that doesn't
quite fit, and that the sentence as it stands is not going to be
back-translated to the meaning Carroll intended, that tatpi still
isn't wrong per se - but I might favor a tanru if I were the one doing
the translation. (Said tanru would involve "tatpi" if it were me,
because I associate "tatpi" with sleep in my mind even though one does
not always lead to the other and I think it fits with the notion that
right after being tatpi Alice very probably has a long and fascinating
dream.)

That said, this is probably only one of a thousand choices in the book
that could be done several ways and for which quibbles could be raised
with any of them; I figure the fact that I'd do it a little
differently doesn't make the person who did the actual work wrong.

 - mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

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